Hi, everybody, I’m back! I just needed a mental vacation from hanging out online, I think – anyway, I was buried with work and feeling pretty blah, and it was just easier to go away and focus on working for a while; I do have antisocial spells now and then, and this was a good one. Not that I succeeded that well in getting that much work done, but it was a valiant effort.
Anyway, yay, I have a grandkitty! (What? I don’t have any grandchildren, so I’ll take what I can get!) Yum Yum is adorable. I can’t wait to meet her. And if she’s like my Emily, it’ll only take a brief spell of mixing the traditional litter with the pine and she’ll figure out that the pine is really nice. Emily actually prefers it in pellets these days instead of powdery – she gets quite insistent that I clear out all the powder where the pine has disintegrated. But it has absolutely zero smell, so we all appreciate that.
My 88-year-old mother is having her other knee replaced in January, so lucky me, I get to go to Seattle and take care of her for a while afterwards. Actually, it should be quite pleasant; she’s a good patient. And I can even take my job along with me, so hopefully it won’t interfere with my life too much.
In happier news, Papa Tigs and I have finally booked that Alaska cruise that we’ve been wanting to take for years and years. Yay! We’re not going till September 2009, so we have plenty of time to anticipate it. Which we shall.
My other piece of even more exciting news: It looks like we’ve actually managed to score tickets to one of the inaugural balls! So not only will I go down to the Mall to join the crowd for the inauguration, we can then get dressed up and go to a big fancy party. I’ve never attended an inauguration, so I am crazy excited. And possibly crazy; this inauguration will be crazy indeed! There are, rarely, good things about living in the D.C. metro area, and this is definitely one of them.
So what’s been going on around here? Nelly is missing? What happened? I see there are some new faces here and some old ones returning; sheesh, leave this place for a few weeks and you people have the nerve to carry on without me!

Anyway, it’s good to be back. Oh, and in response to the OP, I’m not so much a shirtaholic as a yarnaholic. My yarn stash has already outgrown my ability to knit it in the foreseeable future, and of course most new projects require yarn that’s not already in my stash. If people wouldn’t keep making and selling so many beautiful yarns, I wouldn’t have this problem! It’s all THEIR fault!
